Press Release - AmCham's Recommendations for Clearner Transport

“Increasing funds to encourage the purchase of energy-efficient vehicles and the construction of charging stations, all the while ensuring the continuity of the public call, are key to supporting the development of e-mobility in Croatia. Funds allocated in previous years for e-mobility are not sufficient for achieving a significant share of e-vehicles and charging stations in Croatia. It is also necessary to ensure the continuity of incentives, not only in the coming years, but in terms of an open year-round public call as well,” said Andrea Doko Jelušić, Executive Director of AmCham, at a meeting with representatives of the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund.

The topic of the meeting was AmCham's proposition titled “Recommendations for the improvement of allocation of incentives for cleaner transport”, aimed at ensuring a greater number of e-vehicles on the roads, and a more extensive network of charging stations in Croatia. On behalf of the Fund, the meeting was attended by Alenka Košiša Čičin-Šain, Deputy Director, Ljiljana Bukovec, Advisor to the Director, and Mario Mihetec, Head of the Service for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources.

AmCham welcomes the EPEEF's practice to resume the co-financing of the purchase of energy-efficient vehicles (for citizens and legal entities) from 2018 after the break in 2016 and 2017, as well as the construction of charging stations from 2019.

Apart from increasing resources and ensuring continuity, it is important to ensure additional transparency in the procurement of vehicles by applying the pre-established categorization of eligible vehicles. Persons who have reserved financial resources from the Fund, based on the attached offer by suppliers, must be made accountable, since they can cancel the procurement without any consequences, thus preventing other interested parties in receiving the funds, states AmCham's proposition paper.

In addition, in the case of the construction of charging stations, the costs of the electricity connection and all costs of the installation and distribution of the electrical cable should be co-financed, given that they represent the largest part of the investment in the construction of a charging station. There is no mechanism for monitoring energy consumption at co-financed charging stations, so it is necessary to establish it, and give priority to a digitalized system for monitoring energy consumption at charging stations.

AmCham believes that it is imperative to simplify the administrative process of collecting documentation, and that the Fund should be able to directly request all documents/data held by other institutions from the competent authorities.

Transport accounts for almost a quarter of European greenhouse gas emissions. Among various forms of transport, road traffic is by far the greatest greenhouse gas emissions polluter with a share of over 70%. In order to achieve ambitious national and European climate goals, it is necessary to turn to the use of technologies with reduced CO2 emissions, along with the use of renewable energy sources – conditions which e-mobility certainly satisfies.